If you are involved in an accident, health insurance can be extremely important in assisting with the medical bills you will incur. If you are in an auto accident, so long as you have personal injury protection (or PIP) benefits, your initial medical treatment will be covered to some extent. If you are involved in a slip and fall for instance, you will not be entitled to PIP benefits. PIP also has it’s own downfalls.
PIP will only cover 80% up to $10,000.00 of your medical bills. Not including that you may have a deductible on your PIP benefits and you may even have some lost wages that you want paid by your PIP benefits.
PIP can get exhausted extremely quickly, especially if you required emergency room treatment. Who is going to cover the rest of the medical bills once these types of benefits are exhausted?
Health insurance is the answer. If you cannot afford health insurance, we encourage you to apply for Medicaid or some other benefit to which you may qualify for.
We recently had a case which is a perfect example of why health insurance is vital. Our client got into an auto accident. The client was transported to the emergency room with serious injuries and required emergency surgery as a result. The emergency room bill was significant. Way more than the PIP coverage. The tort-feasor had a minimal $10,000.00 bodily injury policy and the client had no UM coverage (which is another issue altogether that we discussed in a prior blog post). Luckily, the client did have health insurance coverage.
PIP made their payments and the client’s health insurance picked up the rest of the bill. Client was lucky and was able to get all of the medical bills paid for and walk away from the accident with a little bit of the settlement proceeds after we got a reduction on the health insurance lien against the case.
Had the client of not had health insurance, the case would have went a very different direction and the client very well may have ended up filing for bankruptcy. That is not a scenario you ever want to be in. Having to file for bankruptcy due to someone else’s negligence is just wrong.
Please, do yourself a huge service and get health insurance. I know it can be expensive, but it could mean the difference of having to file for bankruptcy or walking away from an accident debt free.
If you have any questions about health insurance or how it affects your injury case, please give us a call at (561) 722-7710 and we are more than happy to discuss this with you for free.
